Last week's Off the Record showcased a junior IT guy caught in a tough situation. Readers sounded off with their own advice. On the one hand, there's your pride; on the other, your job -- and your trousers. Last week's Off the Record told the story of a young fellow in IT support just trying to make his way in the datacenter when he accidentally pushed the wrong button. To make a long story short, if he released Last week’s Off the Record showcased a junior IT guy caught in a tough situation. Readers sounded off with their own advice.On the one hand, there’s your pride; on the other, your job — and your trousers. Last week’s Off the Record told the story of a young fellow in IT support just trying to make his way in the datacenter when he accidentally pushed the wrong button. To make a long story short, if he released the button, a critical server would have shut down while people were using it, and he’d be history. Yet he couldn’t reach the help line some 10 feet away. And so he took off his pants and attempted to lasso the phone, dragging it to him. Well, you get the picture. (For the down-and-dirty details, read “Don’t lift a finger.”)Our IT readers, problem-solvers by nature, had plenty of alternative solutions for this fellow. Some of them were pretty creative. Practicality goes a long way, as John writes: “Why not use his belt to loop around the rack and possibly tie the button down?” Or, for that matter, shoelaces would work, too. If irony is what you seek, check out Sachin’s advice for turning the tables on a sticky situation: “Dude, was there no sticky tape around? A coin or three, plus some sticky tape, and you are free to walk over to the phone, no streaking needed.” Sound wisdom, indeed, dude.And then there was Topaz, the risk taker, who found himself (or herself?) in a similar situation. Topaz writes: “Fortunately, I’d recently tried something you don’t normally do on a live production server. A quick let-go and repress of the power button. I chanced it, and it worked. It didn’t power off. Something like that isn’t in the tech manuals, and it doesn’t work everywhere. It also doesn’t work on OS systems that detect the press; thankfully, Novell Netware (and probably the BIOS/ACPI settings of the machine) weren’t talking to each other back then.” Nearly all readers commended our hapless writer for his courage to take one for the team. His, ahem, exposure in front of IT folks earned him some well-deserved respect (and, yes, a few laughs). Because downtime isn’t funny. Submit your own tales — we don’t publish names, so your boss won’t ever know you talked. Send them to offtherecord@infoworld.com. Data Management